Bush to seek EU support for new health projects

By Jeremy Pelofsky

KRANJ, Slovenia (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush will seek support from the European Union to help combat treatable diseases in Africa and provide health care in Afghanistan, a White House official said on Monday.

At the annual U.S.-EU summit on Tuesday, Bush plans to ask for financial commitments to treat so-called neglected tropical diseases such as hookworm and river blindness, which is caused by a parasite spread by blackflies, the official said.

"These are seven significant diseases which together afflict close to a billion people," Dan Price, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, told reporters aboard Air Force One as Bush flew to the summit in Slovenia.

"These diseases are treatable and beatable by medicines that are available today," Price said, adding that it would cost around $1 billion. The United States has already committed $350 million over the next five years, he said.

Bush will also propose boosting the number of health care workers in Afghanistan, he said without elaborating.

The U.S. president has been pressing global health care issues during the last week, drawing attention to one of his foreign policy efforts that has been widely praised at a time when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dominated headlines.

Last week Bush prodded other rich industrialized nations to make good on their commitments made last year to provide their share of $60 billion pledged for fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Price said Bush would use the summit to press the Group of Eight (G8) nations to follow through on their commitments.

"It is critical that the G8 demonstrate that it is accountable and it is fulfilling the commitments that it has made," he said. The United States has already allocated the money to that effort, according to the White House.

Earlier this year, Bush proposed doubling to $30 billion over five years his signature foreign aid program, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress proposed expanding funding for AIDS relief, tuberculosis and malaria programs to $50 billion.

(Editing by Diana Abdallah)